Wednesday, May 23, 2007

del.icio.us bookmarks vs. blogroll

Following the lead of Jason Calacanis, I have entered into the del.icio.us stream of bookmarking and sharing links with the del.icio.us community, as well as my blog readers.

twitter.com/jasoncalacanis

Jason messaged on Twitter, and on his blog ("Join me over at delicious"), how he was going to stop posting at his blog for a period of time, and "blog" only on Twitter. Then, later, he announced on Twitter that he would continue to twitter, but would also "blog" on del.icio.us, instead of his regular blog.

How do you "blog" on del.icio.us?

Well, as a newbie, I can say that when you install the del.icio.us widgets on your Firefox brower chrome, and bookmark a web site or blog post you really like, you get a form to fill out, with your remarks and tags you assign to the site being bookmarked.

I usually type in one sentence about the site, for my own archiving, and so others can quickly get why I bookmarked a particular site. So del.icio.us bookmarking is similar to Twitter pithy messaging with a 140 character limit. Not sure if there is a character limit on del.icio.us bookmark commentary, but I imagine most are short.

Twitter, then, is fast lane communication of brief messages, insights, cool links, tips, and questions to the Twitter user community, that portion of it that are your Friends, those who Follow your "tweets" (Twitter message stream).

del.icio.us, on the other hand, is a way to bookmark your favorite web sites, blogs, online resources...and share those links and remarks with the del.icio.us community. Since I just started on del.icio.us several days ago, I have not built up a large network yet.

I am using del.icio.us bookmarking as a substitute for a blogroll, which I have recently deleted.

Thus, instead of listing blogs I like in my sidebar, I am listing specific web pages and blog posts that I recommend to others, and wish to archive for my own files.

A blogroll takes your blog readers to blogs, most of which, including this one, are uneven in their relevance, quality, and value. So, going to the home page, or latest post, may not be a valuable as linking to a specific page or post.

So I started a Vaspers the Grate account at del.icio.us, filled out a few profile details, uploaded a photo of me, etc. Next step: get code for the bookmark public display widget, to insert into the HTML code of my blog design template.

http://del.icio.us/vaspersthegrate

Go to my account by clicking that link above, or paste URL into browser address bar, and you'll see a list of sites I have bookmarked as valuable.

Jason Calacanis and Mark Orchant are in my network, so I can see what they're bookmarking. That's one of the social media aspects of del.icio.us

Adding tags to a bookmark (or blog post) is a great way to index, and is merely a matter of adding a few keywords to the tag input box. Think of it as a little extra stuff to type, but having far-reaching effects.

This is my "del.icio.us bookmarks vs. blogroll" experiment, its aims and methodology.

P.S. I am also using folkd as a way to bookmark favorite, relevant, valuable sites and blogs.